Lessons from a TV show?

In “Mad Men”, the main character Don Draper occasionally cheats on his wife. 

They live together in a big house outside of New York City with their two children. And most days when Don Draper cheats, his excuse for coming home late is work. 

However, one day he gets home very early and cannot pull the usual work excuse. 

So he comes up with a story about how he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with high blood pressure. That same afternoon, the family has spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. 

As Don Draper wants to help himself with salt, his wife refuses to give him salt and tells their children “Daddy can’t have salt, because he has high blood pressure!”

Yes, I know this is a television show and that you absolutely shouldn’t take health advice from such sources. However, there’s an important point in that scene that I want to discuss.

If we move on to more serious matters, salt can indeed be a contributor to high blood pressure. In fact, many people who eat foods with too much salt can get high blood pressure. 

What happens is, if you eat too much salt your body holds water to wash the salt from your body. That can cause your blood pressure to increase. 

Now, first and foremost that only applies to a couple of salt types. Mostly those salts that contain sodium. 

Not only that, but some more context is essential for understanding this condition. Usually other factors contribute to high blood pressure such as for example age, overweight, other diseases and illnesses and even genetics and stress.

When it comes to overweight there’s a lot you can do yourself. 

Lose fat. Start working out and eat healthy. Ditch the sugar. 

But, genetics, age and stress isn’t that easy to do anything with. In fact, stress is the only thing in that bracket that you can really “do” something about. 

Which means that oftentimes, it may help to take a blood pressure lowering supplement. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how to reverse your aging process. Sure you may do a lot to slow it down like working out, dieting correctly and even do cosmetic surgery to make yourself look younger. There’s a lot that can be done on the outside of your body, but on the inside it’s a whole different story.

As for your genes, you know that as much as I do. Unless there is a fundamental breakthrough in science that allows you to take genes from another person, I wouldn’t count too much on removing the gene in your body that’s responsible for high blood pressure.

Lose fat and get your diet on track. Then of course talk to your doctor.

And as always I recommend you take a blood pressure supplement.